Like it says, it was Sunday night when I started doing maintenance for all the websites I make the attempt to look after. I have to find out why the webalizer software insists on messing with one of my sites. I may just have to turn it off, as it isn’t really useful for these sites.
Looks like a busy week coming up, interview call tomorrow (yeah, I know it’s Thanksgiving), and I have a bunch of stuff to do for my current employer before the end of the month. That should keep me busy for the next 4 (or so) weeks. Friday will be a day off, as I’m going to spend the weekend with my brother, well part of it, as I’m attending linuxfest on Saturday and that should be a full day. That makes for a 3 day week. That will be kind of nice for a change.
I’m sure I had a point when I started rambling about all of this, but I seem to have lost it somewhere. Maybe I need to make notes before I start writing so I don’t forget things. I’ve posted another chunk of BSDCan 2007 audio at my Vox Blog and with some luck, I may get another day or two finished this week. Two days completed, four to go. At some point, the enhanced podcasts will be listed for download, but that depends on when Dan wants to publish them. I’m saving my bandwidth for the moment. I also have a bunch of video to publish, but that can wait until I get my new computer (much faster).
In other oddball news, I decided to finish (well get the next piece in place) of a modding project I started last Christmas. I have an Xbox and I decided that it needed one of those mod chips. I made the appropriate mods and never got back to it, my first attempt to use the newly modified box failed and I decided that since the bypass still worked properly, I’ll deal with it later. Today, I came to the conclusion that later is now. It was that or rake wet leaves. I’m hoping they will be dry later tomorrow afternoon, but thats a different story. Anyway, all my attempts to make the change failed - at least the ones I tried using the cdrom method with. In a fit of desperation, I added it to my network and network flashed it with no issues. All I need to do now is add a new dashboard application, install a bigger hard drive and load up all of my games. In case you are wondering, no I don’t have pirated games, but the DVD drives on these things have a tendency to fail and I’d prefer to have an alternative method of playing than depending on a flimsy laptop style drive. The machine itself has not logged too many hours, probably a couple of hundred in the past 4 years, and I bet it would get more use if it was a little easier to use.
I’ve also been messing with a bunch of monitoring programs, looking for that “killer app” and so far have not been completely wowed. I may go for simpler and functional that all pretty and complex, as I want information, not problems. So far I’ve played with Nagios, ZenOSS, Zabbix and at present, Nagios is the winner, just because I can’t easily scramble the configuration. I still have Pandora and Hobbit to play with. Hobbit was written by a friend of mine years ago as a extension of Big Brother and I have played with that (big brother). I’m hoping it’s a quick config and then I can compare. If the config is as easy as I think it will be and the reporting generates the kind of data I need, then I’ll go with simple. If not, then it’s back to the drawing board. I can always try groundwork (uses Nagios as a base).
I also need to generate some system statistics/data. Pretty much everything I need to chart is available from a combination of command line utilities, but there is one item that bugs me. Linux has the free command that spits out memory and swap info in a succint manner. Solaris does not have such a beast. I can generate the same type of info, but it’s a bastard conglomeration of crap to get it. If anyone knows a simpler method than messing with top and a whole lot of grep/awk scripting, that would be great. Let me know at the next meeting.
I do ramble when I get going don’t i?
Don’t forget, the HTCIA meeting early next week (Oct 16) is part 2 of the case study.